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Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 27, 2013 7:12 pm
by rgg
Redwic wrote:I guess my concern is more along the lines of SP member favoritism over the quality of an actual contribution.
But perhaps that cannot be eliminated, no matter what the change is.


I don't see any way to avoid this as long as we have any sort of voting. In fact, part of this may be favoritism, another part is simply that someone consistently contributes good stuff, then, naturally, something new by that person gets more viewers - nothing wrong with that I believe. But provided that enough people simply vote honestly on whatever they happen to see, these effects shouldn't be overwhelming. And, for the record, with voting honestly I mean that anybody should use their own ideas about what to vote for, but consistently, regardless of who posted the contribution. Some may vote for pets, others for photoshopped sunsets, others for pictures with climbers in them and so on... Doesn't matter, as long as you do so consistently, and keep voting, honestly!

Redwic wrote:PERSON A makes a Mountain page. The mountain might not have an eye-catching name or be in a familiar region, but PERSON A spends many hours to make certain the page is full of useful information, including routes, driving directions gear, etc.

PERSON B makes a Mountain page, too. The mountain has an eye-catching name or is in a familiar region, but PERSON B spends a little time making the page with only basic information provided.

PERSON A's page gets little attention despite being a thorough and helpful page, and only musters two votes.
PERSON B's page gets more attention despite being a page with less usable content but with a lot of eye-catching photos, and musters 15 votes.


This is a different bias: not by popularity of the contributor, but on how well known a peak or area is. Obviously famous peaks and areas get more viewers and therefore more votes. And peaks in areas with which more SP-members are familiar get more votes. That doesn't say anything about the quality of the contribution, but it happens. So the system isn't perfect? So be it.

Generally speaking, it is a complicated matter how many votes a contribution gets, and many influencing factors could be seen as unfair or biased. These are just a two examples. I simply say, don't take it all too serious. The main thing is to have a way to distinguish good stuff on SP from bad. Sometimes I like to browse through the best new stuff, say from the last week, month or even longer - and I can do that, because there are enough people that do vote, despite all the limitations the system may have. So, thank you to all honest voters out there!

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 27, 2013 7:34 pm
by Redwic
Thank you for the input, rgg. It definitely gives me a little more to think about.
You are definitely correct... some people only vote for some people, some types of pages, some types of images, etc. That cannot be avoided, in any voting system. I am guilty of that, too, as I do not get as much time on this website as I would like, and sometimes I have to "pick and choose" what stuff to do and where to go. The same goes for other websites, as I only have so much free time available.

When I do vote on pages, I always try to remain honest in my voting in regards to whether or not basic criteria has been achieved to make the page a valuable resource to others. I personally do not vote in regards to photos, mountain/rock, or location. But if important information is missing, then my vote will reflect that... although if really bad I tend to contact the page creator with suggestions to help achieve a better page score, or at least so I can revise my vote (if I even gave one).

With that said, I do not punish people with my voting if their contributions do not have the pizazz or appeal of a page contribution of someone like Sarah Simon, Josh Lewis, or Dow Williams (just to name a few). Not everyone has the time or the resources to make their contributions "stand out" among contributions such as theirs, nor would I expect them to be like that.

I am going to sit back and ponder this some more. 8)

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 27, 2013 7:42 pm
by Redwic
Montana Matt wrote:I do understand your concerns Redwic. And the goal with the new system was to try to make the voting system more "fair" for everyone and reward the people that submit the best content of the most valuable types of content. As rgg points out, it's not perfect and never will be. But I do think that the most recent change is an improvement over the previous system. If we see that it's not functioning as we hope it to, we can continue to change the score/power calculations until we have something that works for SP.


That is something that we both agree on. One of the biggest gripes I have heard from some members (and lurkers) is that the voting system is unfair and lopsided. As such, I know quite a few people who use this website but who do not vote because of that reason. The website should be content-driven, not eye-catching-driven... but with a voting-only system those two things cannot be separated.

By creating the "1-5 down & 6-10 up" voting system, at least that is a major step in the right direction. It is much better than before, when giving someone's contribution a 7/10 would cause the associated scores to go majorly downhill. I am sure there are still going to be people who only vote "10/10" if they vote at all, but at least the new voting scheme should help some people re-evaluate their voting.

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 27, 2013 8:52 pm
by Josh Lewis
I will definitely agree with Redwic on a few points:

1. Obscure pages that are well done do not get the appreciation they deserve. I've seen Redwic post some good pages that I felt went "unnoticed". One of my best mountain pages I've ever posted (perhaps my absolute best) is actually one of my lowest rated. This is because the mountain is not very well known, despite the fact that it is a awesome climb pumped with tons of details. I inherited the page which means it will never show up on what's new (back in the day when it did, the page was not so good). So I feel for Redwic on this one

2. There is a atmosphere of votes equaling quality. The truth is that that is not true. Need proof? I've seen an airplane photo with no mountains in the background whats so ever get more votes than some truly amazing photos. I have many examples but the point is that votes do bring up a lot of quality content, but they do not necessarily speak out how good that content actually is. So here's the wording I personally don't like "Best Mountains & Rocks". I would have called it "Best Rated Mountains & Rocks" which makes it much more accurate. Not a big deal, but it does create an atmosphere of what the "best stuff" is. Kinda like the 7 summits being the best pages on the site... right? :wink: (Fletch did honestly impress me with the Denali page upgrade)

3. I really enjoyed Redwic's point about having a standard. We already have one. But in the past I've had a case where the admins seemed annoyed by my postings because they were afraid I'd raise the standards. This is good in content, but bad in the sense that it scares off new posters. The way I see it, most of the obvious mountains in the world are taken. So if your going to put up a page on something, let it be a good one. I can't tell you how many times I've not been able to contribute good information because the page was taken with only fair quality.

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 27, 2013 10:04 pm
by Scott
One minor suggestion.

Is there a way to correct the ages on the user list to read our actually ages? Unless our birthday is on January 1st, the system ages us before we need to. Next January 1, SP is going to make me turn 40 six months before I actually do. Oh, the horror.

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 27, 2013 11:24 pm
by Josh Lewis
I'll mark that in my custom object. I completely agree and have noticed this over 5 years ago.

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 12:02 am
by yatsek
Montana Matt wrote:I do understand your concerns Redwic. And the goal with the new system was to try to make the voting system more "fair" for everyone and reward the people that submit the best content of the most valuable types of content.

The way I see it, one of the best advantages of the new system is not its "fairness" but the fact that it creates a real opportunity to provide feedback - in the simplest way - to the maintainer of a page about what standards the voters expect.

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 1:04 am
by Josh Lewis
yatsek nailed it! 8)

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 1:40 am
by mrchad9
Our only options as really to either give every page a flat score, or implement a system that uses community votes to try to acknowledge quality. Any member that isn't contributing because they are afraid they won't get votes is probably putting more importance on it than anyone else is.

Redwic you mentioned that you felt it would be better if you understood the system more. Please read my lasts posts in the SP voting thread, and the SP FAQ. It's all there.

Any system where we try to acknowledge quality is going to be subjective. And ANY system that is subjective is not going to be perfect. Period.

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 3:12 am
by mrchad9
He's talking about the user list Matt.

http://www.summitpost.org/users

The ages there are based on calendar years, not actual birthdays. Note Dow is a year older on that list than his profile.

Tiny bit of code missing somewhere.

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 3:14 am
by Josh Lewis

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 3:35 pm
by Buz Groshong
Don't know how others feel, but I'm not too crazy about some of the changes. On the front page, photos are now on the right and pages on the left - seems to me like it makes photos more prominent than pages. Also couldn't help but notice that the photo at the top of the list was of a wading bird - nice photo, but nothing to do with mountains, climbing, etc.

The server speed is definitely a big improvement. The rest of the changes seem OK.

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 3:47 pm
by mrchad9
I hear you on the front page Buz. The left to right layout was something I suggested to shake things up, but I too wonder if it now decreased the prominence of the mountain pages. It is easy to adjust, and if others feel the same then don't consider it permanent.

The top photo mechanism will change later, we thought this a good start while Matt works on other things in the meantime. It semi-randomly chooses from a group of the top images, not totally random, but there is little that can be done if folks vote for non mountain pages. But that's why there is more than one. There's at least a few mountains that show in that group.

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 9:21 pm
by Josh Lewis
Not sure if this is already included, but Photo of the Day and Photo of the Week should be excluded from the Photo of the Moment. I haven't seen them be the same, but I don't know exactly how the system was designed. When Featured photo is out, make sure photo of the moment cannot select a featured photo. This wau we avoid duplicates.

Re: SP new changes (done)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 9:40 pm
by mrchad9
Josh Lewis wrote:Not sure if this is already included, but Photo of the Day and Photo of the Week should be excluded from the Photo of the Moment. I haven't seen them be the same, but I don't know exactly how the system was designed. When Featured photo is out, make sure photo of the moment cannot select a featured photo. This wau we avoid duplicates.

Matt just adjusted the POTM mechanism, as previously we were seeing some photos multiple days. Currently it should be a new batch every day, all from different members. I don't think we will see any POTD that can show up as POTM, but it can (and perhaps should) be able to happen the other way around (I think that last part is accurate... that it currently can happen where POTM becomes POTD later on... but who knows at this point).